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The Big Share: March 3, 2015

The Obama Administration seems to be going more forcefully after big banks, but this is little more than a charade.

The United States is asking Scotland Yard to arrest two London-based JPMorgan Chase traders who were involved in the multibillion-dollar trading loss that caused waves last year. It is also wanting a confession from the bank itself, a move that is seen by some as a departure from its lenient treatment so far of the financial sector for the mess it left us all in.

"The plan to arrest the traders hints at an aggressive new stance from the government, which has come under fire for prosecuting only a few Wall Street employees tied to the 2008 financial crisis," says the New York Times. "Taking aim at employees of a Wall Street giant like JPMorgan, even when they fall below the executive ranks, could send a warning shot across the financial industry."

One could only wish.

The two traders are near the bottom of the JPMorgan hierarchy, as a helpful chart at Huffington Post reveals. JPMorgan top execs designed the strategy that led the "London Whale" trader to take unseemly risks, "but none of these people are due for any frog-marching any time soon, various news reports suggest," as HuffPo notes.

The ability of the financial sector to evade responsibility for its various misdeeds is made even more baffling, given that they caused the Great Recession, as documented in Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning documentary "Inside Job" and his companion book "Predator Nation."

"What it did in the bubble and the crisis really was criminal," Ferguson said in an interview last year. "If the criminal justice system were used properly, these kinds of things would be much less frequent and much less severe than they are in fact becoming."

Instead, all of us were left holding the bag.

"The key problem in the bubble years was the ability of private actors to profit by taking huge risks in issuing and securitizing bad mortgages, while handing the downside risk to taxpayers," Dean Baker writes in The Guardian. "This was the story with Countrywide, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and the rest."

The attitude of the Obama folks toward the big banks was revealed when Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate in March: "The size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy."

When faced with a barrage of criticism, Holder backtracked, telling the House two months later, "Let me be very, very, very clear. Banks are not too big to jail. If we find a bank or a financial institution that has done something wrong, if we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, those cases will be brought."

But as Mark Gongloff wryly commented for Huffington Post, the Obama Administration's "record is also very, very, very clear that not a single bank has been charged with any crime" for their role in the economic meltdown.

By Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion—put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer, and environmentalist in Kentucky. This poem, first published in 1973, is reprinted by permission of the author and appears in his “New Collected Poems” (Counterpoint).